Long-term projects, billable hours and invoicing

[partomas]

Hi everyone,

I’m curious how others are handling long-term projects in EspoCRM, especially project stages, billable hours and invoicing.

Our flow is roughly this:

We win an Opportunity and mark it as Won. At that point we have a signed contract with a fixed total value and a defined project deadline.

Then the actual delivery starts and we manage it through Projects. The project is split into stages/milestones, and after completing each stage we invoice the agreed amount.

What I’m trying to figure out is the cleanest way to structure this in EspoCRM.

How do you link Opportunity → Project → milestones/stages → Invoices?

How do you track the total contract value, amount already invoiced and amount still remaining?

Also, how do you handle billable hours? We want to track the actual hours spent on the project, even when the customer is invoiced a fixed amount per milestone rather than hours × rate. The main goal is to see whether we are staying within the internal project budget.

Ideally, I’d like to open a Project and quickly see something like:

Contract value: €50,000
Invoiced: €20,000
Remaining to invoice: €30,000
Planned hours: 800h
Actual hours: 460h
Project progress: 50%

Would be great to hear how others have implemented something similar. Are you using custom entities/fields, Project Tasks, Invoices, workflows/BPM, or something else?

If you’ve implemented something like this for your own company or for clients working on a project-based model, I’d really appreciate any examples of how you structured it. Screenshots, entity relationships, workflows, or just a quick explanation of the setup would be very helpful.

Thanks!

[emillod]

We've done some implementations of EspoCRM for our clients. On of them was working in project base mode, so we've recommended to purchase a Project Management pack from EspoCRM & we've created separate entity for calculating the costs of the project. Additionally we've installed him our Time Tracker tool where we've added new features such us converting counted time to money and thanks to that he knows the details.

I think that Project Manage is a solid base for companies like that.

[eymen-elkum]

This can be implemented in different ways, and the official EspoCRM Project Management extension is worth reviewing, but it is not strictly required.

A practical starting model could be:

Opportunity → Project → Milestones → Invoices
Project → Work Logs
Milestone → Invoice

The Project can contain fields such as:

- Contract Value
- Planned Hours
- Actual Hours
- Invoiced Amount
- Remaining Amount
- Internal Cost
- Progress Percentage

Formula can handle straightforward calculations, for example:

remainingAmount = contractValue - invoicedAmount;

The important part is to define the relationships and responsibility for each value clearly. For example, decide whether invoiced amounts are calculated from related invoices, milestone amounts, or stored snapshots.

For recording actual working time, we have developed an Ebla Work Log module that can link work-log entries to projects or project tasks. This makes it possible to compare planned and actual hours even when the customer is invoiced a fixed amount rather than an hourly rate.

For calculations involving related records, aggregation, synchronization or more complex validation, a backend hook can update the Project whenever a Work Log, Milestone or Invoice is created or changed.

Therefore, I would approach this in stages:

1. Define the entity relationships and financial rules.
2. Add the required fields and Formula calculations.
3. Introduce Work Logs for actual hours.
4. Add backend hooks only where Formula is insufficient.
5. Build the required reports and dashboard indicators.

The official Project Management extension can provide Projects, Tasks and Milestones and reduce the amount of work, but a well-designed solution using native entities, fields, relationships, Formula and a small amount of backend logic can also meet the requirement.

I would recommend documenting the data model and calculation rules before implementation. That will avoid duplicated values, inconsistent invoice totals and unnecessary customization.

[emillod]

Yeah - for sure it's not always required. For example we're using standard process with opportunities and tasks